As the title says I need to refinish the receiver on a post '64 Winchester model 94.

I realize the receiver material is some kind of alloy that won't take blueing very well. The rifle belongs to a buddy of mine that wants me to "clean it up real good" and promises to take better care of it in the future. He uses the rifle as a "truck gun" and to say he has neglected it would be an understatement. The receiver has spotty rust all over it but the barrel and tube is surprisingly in decent shape.

What can I refinish the receiver with that will stick to this "Winchester mystery metal" and be durable enough to be tossed around in a truck and not chip off easily? It doesn't have to match the original finish perfectly, as long as it looks decent. Also is there a certain priming/prepping process for this special alloy?

__________________"Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading"

Winchester used something similar to, or was, a black chrome plating on the post 1964 94's. A long time ago, it was said that they were iron plated, then blued, but that is not so, as it was a black plating over the alloy receiver. They do this on some of the tools today, especially those shiny black sockets and ratchets.

Now, there are a few ways to go. If a gunsmith is set up to do it, he can recreate the black chrome plating, or he can hot blue the frame using Brownell's Oxynate 84, though the bluing can be finicky to use. Last, is to paint the receiver with Guncoat or similar, and bake the finish. Those are about the only way to color stainless alloy's.

The 1964-82 Winchester receivers aren't "alloy", which suggest they're not steel, when they are.

Instead of being forged from billet steel however, they were formed using sintered steel - a much less expensive proposition than forging.

The sintered receivers were first iron-plated, then coated in whatever the subject model required.

Standard Carbines received a coloration that looked like bluing; commemoratives received (variously) plating in black chrome, pewter, silver, gold or brass.
The Antique Carbine (model) received a finish that resembled CCH.

FWIW, I would recommend ridding your buddy's M94 receiver of the rust, then applying a bake-on DuraKote finish - which should give pretty good protection to a truck gun, short of spending much more $$$ on a black Teflon, etc finish.

I did hot salt bluing and had a post '64 M94 that came out of the tank with a great blue/black finish. Problem was that it wiped right off with a paper towel... Was I surprised ! A person at Winchester told me that Post 64 Model 94's were made from "graphitic steel" which is very similar to cast iron and will not blue. I sent the receiver only back to Winchester where they tin plated and then blued the receiver for $25. Their blue was about a perfect match to the parts I had done.

There is a difference between sintered metal, which is shaped by forming powdered metal under heat and compression, and graphitic steel, which can be cast or machined. There is little doubt that those receivers are cast, but not using the same material as used by, say, Ruger. If Winchester used graphitic steel, they won't take bluing, period. (Google "graphitic steel" for more info.)

There are a lot of steel working processes today that are far beyond the traditional casting, machining and stamping. One, of course, is MIM, which has revolutionized the firearms industry, reducing production costs and allowing production of guns at a reasonable price. Of course there are those who say they will never, ever, own anything with an MIM part; they better not drive a modern car, or buy a new refrigerator, or use any one of a thousand products made with MIM.

There are a lot of ideas passed around as to the nature of the steel Winchester used. I have heard both siliceous and graphitic, but it doesn't matter, they were definitely hard to color. When I was refinishing a lot of guns, we tried several processes to turn them black. Iron plating, then bluing was difficult because the iron was of inconsistent thickness. Black oxide worked OK but not great, and it was charcoal gray. Black chrome is kind of purplish and flakes, black nickel is charcoal gray, epoxy powder coat is too thick and causes dimensional problems. The best finish was Brownells Bake-On Lacquer, it came in about a dozen colors. The black was too black, it looked like paint. But it worked well, and the customers liked it because it was tough. That was all before GunKote.

1967 puts it right in the height of the sintering process and as you can see you can achieve a rich blue/black finish on these models. But you have to go old school and rust blue them. And only a few rust blues will achieve a really rich color.

One of the guys on the leverguns forum (Hagler) cold blued a post 64 gun, he sanded the metal well to remove whatever intermediate finish was on it and may have used a Brownells cold blue. It turned out pretty decent for a home job.

Most of the guns in question that I've seen hot blued by regular methods looked purplish. I've been told that some 'smiths alter the tank temp to get them the right color, or use a different blueing salts that work well.

Quote:

The 1964-82 Winchester receivers aren't "alloy", which suggest they're not steel, when they are...

I thought all steels were an alloy of some type, just depending on what percentages of elements it had in it. Stainless is an steel alloy with a percentage of chomium isnt it? Ruger always advertised a Chome-Molybdenum alloy steel.

__________________
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt-

The 1964-82 Winchester receivers aren't "alloy", which suggest they're not steel, when they are...

I thought all steels were an alloy of some type, just depending on what percentages of elements it had in it. Stainless is an steel alloy with a percentage of chomium isnt it? Ruger always advertised a Chome-Molybdenum alloy steel

FWIW, when sombody uses the term "alloy", w/o any qualifer as to type, I presume they mean a pot metal or aluminum alloy confection ILO forged or cast steel (YMMV) - why I used the word "suggests" as the person's meaning.

I took a class at Winchester years ago, and that was one of the questions asked while I was there, or what is the frames on the post 64, 94's made of. He replied about the plating, but that is as far as it went, and was before Brownell's and others came out with the new Oxynate blend that will color them. I remember looking up what the new salts had included, and it was chemicals that worked with stainless steel. I think there is an article on Wikipedia, if I recall, about the chemical(s) used, but you would have to get the name(s) from Brownell's, or the MSDS sheet. The article mentioned something about the reaction of ions, etc., so it's a technical article about the chemical. I looked that up a few years back, but didn't save it.

I still have the Winchester book around here, somewhere, that we received as part of the class, and I'll try to dig it up to see if it had anything in it about this. It has been too long to remember if it did or didn't. It was mostly about the repair on the current guns back in 1984-1985.

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